


organic molecules

by coffeecrowns



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship, Gen, I literally cant explain this enough every speaking character is trans bc i said so, Kinda?, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Child Abuse, Paternal Roy Mustang, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 15:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18033905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeecrowns/pseuds/coffeecrowns
Summary: "It isn't like he starts out trying to collect other trans people. And yet. "Aka Roy Mustang is not the kind of name you are given, it's the kind of name you take.





	organic molecules

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over the course of four hours. #noregrets 
> 
> (also, @ shannon, you inadvertently inspired this by some comment about how a different fic of mine has almost zero cis characters. naturally, i had to outdo myself. ily)

It isn't like he starts out trying to collect other trans people. And yet. 

Roy looks through the records on the train ride out. Riza quizzes him on the sparse notes. They go over their plan. “I’m looking for the Elric siblings,” Roy will say, diplomatically. It isn’t wrong, technically. On his records, it implies  _ sisters  _ but a night in Resembool suggests otherwise. It doesn’t matter, not really, because he imagines the  _ siblings  _ will correct him. He isn’t going to walk into their house and misgender and deadname them. 

Only, he doesn’t walk into their house and address them at all. Because the Elrics have attempted human transmutation, and god, he gets it, he fucking gets it but it obviously has not gone well for them.

Pinako opens the door, glares at him at the first sight of military blue, and her eyebrows deepen when he says “Elric siblings,” for the second time in a frankly terrifying day. 

“Edward and Alphonse,” she explains and corrects. “The Elric Brothers.”

“Of course,” Roy says, “Our mistake.” 

Hawkeye looks at him and gives him a look that says they’ll be correcting their file, which is paperwork Roy is excited to do.

He looks at Ed, who is so small, down two limbs and all his hope, and Roy asks why, thinking he knows the answer. 

Of course, it’s because they wanted to bring back their mother, and so of course he’s dealing with orphans, god damn it. He grabs hold of Ed and drags him up. There’s power in those eyes, rage, and stubbornness. The boys will survive, he’s sure. 

He looks at Alphonse, and feels short, and Ed explains the soul bonding. He almost laughs, because what a killer way to avoid dysphoria, just get rid of your body completely. Ed sees his smile, loses his shit for the first time, and Roy chooses not to explain himself. 

It’s an auspicious first meeting. 

 

Their second meeting, three weeks later, is secret. Hawkeye catches him leaving for the overnight train with a stack of boxes. She helped him forge and get the boys corrected birth certificate through all the checks, and destroy the original, with its incorrect information. It isn’t the first time they’ve done this, nor will it be the last. But of course it doesn’t end there. 

“Sir,” she says. He freezes like a deer in the headlights. She probably knew he was going this weekend because he gave her her hormones at work instead of stopping by in the evening. “They aren’t you,” she continues. She knows how he gets, so low that he can turning helping others into punishing himself, reliving the worst moments of his life. Sometimes it’s Ishval, sometimes it’s his life before Madame Christmas. 

“Of course they aren’t,” he says. “But we keep people from being like us.” 

She puts her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll see you on Monday, sir.” 

He gets on the train. 

 

He met Madame Christmas a little older than the boys are now. He was thirteen, and he wanted to die. His body was wrong, so wrong it was killing him, and he knew he was a boy, had been insisting the fact to his parents even when they hurt him for it. It was a scary choice, but worst case scenario he could kill himself on the street once he ran out of money. Only he didn’t. He had escaped his parents, and once he could be who he was, there was a stupid and reckless hope that kept him going. She found him, barely breathing, digging through her trash. 

“You got a name, kid?” she hollered at him from the bar window. 

“My name is Roy!” he yelled back, ribs stinging.  

“How’d that work out for you?” she asked, softer. 

“Not great,” he confessed, shivering. Which was true, considering he couldn’t feel his toes. 

She walked out with a sandwich and cut up apples. “It’s better than my trash, kid.” 

He was hungry enough to follow her in, and tired enough to fall asleep in couches that had been used for god knows what, and by the time he woke up to a hot chocolate and toast, he felt safe enough to stay. She has books on the human body, and all forms it can come in. He finally reads the word that explains who he is. He wants to do anything he can to stay here, under a roof with someone who know what he is. 

“I know what you do here,” he said. “I’m willing to offer my services in exchange for room and board.”

That was the only time he saw her truly angry. 

“You don’t even joke about that Roy. You’re a kid. You deserve to be taken care of, even no one seems to want to step up to the task.” 

He insisted on helping clean to pay for himself, but she would ruffle his hair even when he didn’t, and fed him regardless. “They’re just chores, Roy,” Madame Christmas would sigh, slipping him some pocket money when she walked in on him sweeping the floor after a long night. 

“Kids do chores,” said Roy calmly. 

“Okay,” she said. “Do you want chocolate chips in your pancakes?”

“Why?” He asked. 

“Because you’re a kid. You’re a bright young man and us old folks have a duty to give you a future.”

“How do I repay you?” He asked. 

“You eat my pancakes,” she deadpanned. 

“I owe you so much,” he tries again. 

“You don’t owe me anything. You owe the next generation, one day it will be your turn to teach them this stuff.” She slides him a book on biochemistry and hormones, and a plate with chocolate chip pancakes. 

Roy takes the book and that tenant of passing responsibility onto the Hawkeye house, and to the academy, and then to Ishval. His foster mother will roll her eyes and say that’s not what she meant, which is true, but she ruffles his hair still anyways. 

 

“You again,” said Pinako. “You brought a peace offering this time. Good call.” She lets him in, and follows him, explaining that he has good timing. “Ed just got out of surgery.” 

Right, the this ten year old is getting painful and traumatic automail surgery. 

“Ed, Al, the Bastard is back for you! He brings a gift,” Pinako yells up the stairs. She turns to him and says “Second door on the left. Knock first.”

He does that. Al calls out, “come in!” He really is the most pleasant of the house. 

Ed looks awful. He’s clearly in immense amounts of pain. But he sits up, and glares Roy down. It’s impressive. 

“I noticed there were some clerical errors on your birth certificate,” he says calmly. Ed’s eyes narrow and Al’s eyelights fade in fear. “Fortunately, I’m well versed in correcting these types of things.” He hands them the new certificate. Ed’s eyes widen as he reads. 

“I heard the recovery from automail surgery can be long and grueling. Not that you can’t handle it,” he says smoothly, as Ed starts to turn a particular shade of red. “But I thought you boys might enjoy some reading.” He hands them a stack of books, books he can’t imagine they can get in their rural life, books about gender and sex and the complications and nuance. He also includes copies of his notes, arrays for hormone blockers and testosterone. If he’s lucky, they won’t ever need to bind, since he’s nearly broken his ribs and given himself pneumonia more times than he wants to count, even with specialized garments. At the bottom is a bag of sugar. He picked it up in the market, the boys know the brand. 

“All hormones are organic molecules. I’m sure you can figure these out,” he says. 

Both brother look at him, with suspicion mostly, though he can’t really read Al. 

“Why?” asks Al. 

“What do you want?” says Ed. 

“All I want is to repay a debt. Once, someone did the same for me. One day, you’ll do the same for someone else. Besides, if you’re going to be a State Alchemist, you have to be in good health. And dysphoria’s a bitch.” 

He turns on his heels, walks out and gets back on the train. He’ll see them again, he’s sure. In the meantime, there’s a nice, warm feeling in his chest. 

 

Riza, originally introduces herself with a different name, one Roy has deliberately forgotten, and she comes out to him while they still live at her father’s house, she won’t let him call her the right pronouns and she doesn’t choose a name. 

“I can’t,” she says. “I won’t be able to go back, and I won’t survive him either way.” Roy understands that. Roy doesn’t understand her loyalty to her father, but he holds onto the hope for both of them. They figure out how to make Roy Mustang legally exist, and he imagines she takes notes. 

She arrives in Ishval with short hair grown out in the most feminine style she can, and she goes by Riza. He’s so damn proud of her. 

 

Edward struts into his office a few years later. He’s grown into himself. It fills some part of him that’s a little broken with warmth. He’s going to be a handful, Roy is certain, and isn’t that something. 

 

Edward is significantly more than a handful. Roy maintains hope that things will work out, even as he adds to his collection of scars, even as he loses Hughes - god, Hughes, their token cis, who loved helping change people’s names as he worked his way up Investigations, who was the first man Roy ever trusted. 

 

After the Promise Day, he sits in perpetual darkness, trying to avoid thinking about what’s next, what on earth he will do after this. The world keeps trying to stop him, and he isn’t young and resilient anymore. 

 

He just wants to see the Elric brothers grow into who they’re supposed to be. The half of the Elrics who are allowed to leave the hospital drags him to a bar. Ed tells him where the drink is placed. 

“Did Truth offer you it as well?” Edward asks, after taking what sounds like three back to back shots. Though he is the saviour of the country, he is 16 and Roy really shouldn’t be allowing this. 

“Offer what, Fullmetal?”

“The right body,” Edward snaps. 

“Oh,” he says, a little less harsh. “Then, yes.” He doesn’t want to think about standing in front of Truth, who started with “While you’re here with your toll.” 

“Al just, came back right. Something about Truth feeling bad for returning him in such poor condition,” Edward admits, taking another drink. 

“I didn’t take the offer. You aren’t alone,” Roy says. 

“Why?” asks Ed. 

What Roy wants to say is that he built this body, and he’s too proud of it to need anything else. And he is proud. But he would do almost anything for the last little details. But not human transmutation.

“I won’t do anything I’m forced into,” he says, taking a drink of his own. “I wanted it though.” 

“You did?” asks Ed. 

“Of course. I can be ambitious about the things I want, but I want this history of human transmutation put behind us more than I want that.”

“We built our bodies,” Ed says quietly.

“And we built our lives,” Roy replies. 

 

Later, once Edward sneaks him back into the hospital, his sight is offered back. Havoc first, but Roy does choose to take it. There's only so many inconveniences he can deal with in his body. Besides, he wants to see the future he’s worked so hard to build, and he has so many debts to pay forward.  

 

Ed can’t make his own hormones anymore, so Roy just gets to make more. The higher in the ranks Roy gets, the more Ed likes to joke about how the Brigadier General and an Ex-Alchemist having a drug deal in Central Command. Over the years, his order only gets bigger, as Ed and Al finds more people who need it, more people like them. Even before he reaches his ambitious goals, he finds himself able to protect so many more than he ever could have dreamed. 

 

Once he leads the country, he allows Madame Christmas to ruffle his hair again. Just once. He still has more to do. 

**Author's Note:**

> sugar and hormones are all organic compounds, and therefore can very easily be transmuted into each other. I think. 
> 
> I've never written for this fandom before but I did a big rewatch a few weeks back and have gone back in headfirst to this glorious fandom that doesn't have enough trans characters. So I evened the scales a bit.


End file.
